


The Town That Time Forgot

by Bidawee



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cults, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Animal Death, Blood and Injury, Dark, Horror, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Monster Worship, Mountie Mitch, Photographer Auston, Pining, Small Towns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 16:21:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16705807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bidawee/pseuds/Bidawee
Summary: The map Auston uses to navigate points out a small township a few miles north from where he is. There’s no other option in sight.





	The Town That Time Forgot

**Author's Note:**

> do you like mountie mitch? me too!  
> https://cursivecherrypicking.tumblr.com/post/179592577503/sorry-to-bother-you-sir-it-seems-you-forgot-your

Collating his portfolio is the motivation, his mother the instigator, his heart his weakness. That’s how the story begins: with a pamphlet for a job outreach in naturalistic photography stuffed into his glove compartment, hot air billowing out from the car vents as he takes to the gravel roads. Fog stripes the vehicle in sheets, turning the lumbering pine trees into street lamps that crane toward the moon.

Auston’s so far out from civilization that the constellations shine through the wispy tail-ends of the clouds. There’s no traffic for mile stretches and he fills up on gasoline at ghost-town petrol stations manned by old men chomping down on stale donuts. It’s an expansive but terribly lonesome existence with no urbanization to speak of. He can’t even guarantee that he’ll find a motel to dump his suitcases into, and so he chugs down black coffees to windshield-wipe the sleep out of his eyes.

It takes until he freezes himself solid chewing mint gum outside to declare he’s travelled far enough north to be adequate. October frost pecks the grass; it’s a canvas looking into a wonderland of colour. He opens the trunk to grab his Pentax fixed-lens, a cheap, rickety camera his grandmother bought for his nineteenth birthday, to do a point-and-shoot of an old tire, spun into an explosion of thorny branches that bite into the rubber.

The wind whistles and takes his scarf billowing out. He’s quickly herded back into the driver’s side where a styrofoam cup of cold coffee sits in the cupholder. It wobbles when the engine starts and is then picked up and then discarded out the window at the first cold kiss on the lips.

The map Auston uses to navigate points out a small township a few miles north from where he is. There’s no other option in sight. Regardless of personal taste, he hits the gas and takes off, staring ahead as his headlights flash yellow diamond-shaped signage, warning him of deer. On the side of the road, the pretty daisies salt and pepper the shrubbery.

 

An hour later, the yellow oak trees are all that overpower the greenery. There’s one row of power lines growing out from the earth and linking together small houses with screen doors poked with holes so big that Auston can see them from behind the smudged windshield. There are parking spots with worn paint decking the hill down to the central roundabout with not a car in sight occupying them. And despite the stores being lit by smoke-spun lanterns inside, outside nature is overtaking the buildings and phone booths. Weeds replace doormats.

There’s a historical inn with a little well at the front by the outskirts of the communal housing. It’s brick on the outside with white exterior siding up against the front. It’s widely vacant too. Auston can spin the wheel of the car to glide up to the front doors without an obstacle in his path--minus the chipmunks nibbling on the leftover scraps from garbage cans.

An old lady sits at the front desk, looking up, down, then up again in fascinating progression. She’s so gobsmacked that when Auston gingerly places a fifty dollar bill, she backs up a step.

“Does this cover it?” Auston says.

“Who are you?” she peeps, like a squirrel caught in the birdfeeder. At second glance, the grime and dirt blotching her face makes Auston’s lips twitch, threatening to curl into a grimace. The contempt she’s hiding behind her eyelids only makes the vision worse.

“I’m here for a room,” he says. “How much?”

“I’m afraid we’re not accepting any new guests. We’re all booked up.”

“That’s not true. No one is outside. Is this about the rate? I can pay more.” His wallet’s chunky with coins and scrunched bills.

Normally he wouldn’t care about schematics or shifty motel owners but the town’s sparseness call to him. There’s a story not written in ink but in the tree rings. It’s the perfect photo shoot, and some kitchen-witch lady isn’t going to pose that big of a threat to it.

“It’s not that,” her bottom lip, cracked by the cold layer, juts out, “it’s just that we’re running a very specific operation here.”

“So, this isn’t a motel as so plainly stated on the signage outside? I’ll take my money elsewhere.”

His hand extends to grab the bill but doesn’t make it far. Her elongated fingernails act as talons, pinning him down and narrowly missing the knuckle.

“Wait.” She sticks her curved nose right into his face. She stinks of dirt. “Sixty dollars.”

“Excuse me?”

She changes on a dime, deflating into a hunchback with a grin that shows off her missing front teeth. “Sixty dollars.”

Auston folks over the extra ten dollars--still a lower rate than anything he’s stumbled onto during his road trip--and swipes the key before the oil from her hands seeps into the metal and finds a way to miraculously rust it. Flipping the keys around displays the big, bold number two. He sees himself off, cleaning away the image of the little hag in front of the studded cork board from his conscience.

It’s a subpar motel. The carpet hasn’t been scrubbed in months; big black footprints lead to the sink and bathroom with imposing accuracy. He checks for bedbugs, finds none, and still pulls out his sleeping bag from his inventory because he’s sure a blacklight would write a story of unseen horrors. His phone has difficulty sucking down battery from the outlet and his cellular service flickers in the top left corner of his phone just enough for the claustrophobia to squeeze his heart.

Ultimately, he’s too tired to care. The mattress underneath all the padding still hurts like sandpaper when it drags against the back of his neck, but he manages. He lets the sound of the crickets chirping work as a metronome, swaying back and forth until he’s crosseyed and his soul splits.

 

He sets his phone alarm to go off at six. It’s not a good sleep but it will work, and sure enough he’s gulping down orange juice from his cooler supplemented with a few bites of toast. He lathers toothpaste over his molars, packs a travel pack with granola bars, film, and two camera bags: one disposable and the other his Pentax. He’s not sure if the sink water is drinkable and omits the aluminum canister.

He tugs on his old-fashioned smokey purple hoodie and dips outside, revelling at how it’s only early morn and the lights are on in every house except the one a few metres adjacent from the motel. The benign glow dapples down on the fallen leaves, mixing them into a collage of organic gold. Just to be safe, Auston uses the high ledge to protect the lens from the water droplets and snaps a clean shot of them to start the journey.

There’s no town directory or arrow signs. It’s dirt roads galore, so it’s lacking in pavement-painted directions too. With no general store or town hall to speak of, Auston’s walking like one of the three blind mice. It’s eerie outside and at the same time, so perfectly photogenic he wants to cry. Even with a digital to extend the life of his film camera, he’s not sure he’ll be leaving with any available space on either.

He sees a breach in the town’s defences, a small pathway cutting through the brush where the trees bend away from. His runners are just strong enough to get a grip on the muddy landscape and propel him through it without taking too much damage.

It’s autumn and Auston still feels the presence of mosquitos heavy in the air. That doesn’t even begin to count the many bugs he sees squirming around and spiderwebs he almost gets tangled up in because he was too obtuse to notice them until the last possible second.

It’s worth it, marginally. The forest can at parts be so dense with ferns and other collective tangles that it feels like he needs a machete to cut through. Something in the air stinks.

Snap. Snap.

Bella bluegrass sprouts up like daisies; moss bubbling like boils on the tree stumps. The further he progresses, the more the maw of the forest opens the wet heat up.

The one thing that doesn’t deteriorate is the smell. It’s something widely carnal. It contains a foul stench masquerading behind an acid bath that makes Auston’s eyes water. He’s elbow deep into gutting the forest of its charms and yet, it’s the chemicals that win the battle. He plugs his nostrils shut with a free hand and treks on, passing it off as animal dung or some spill.

There’s more to see, most climatic of all the appearance of a lake not five minutes down the path. As the wind beats down on the glassy surface, it kicks up sheets of crisp air that’s tossed right back in Auston’s face. The frothy white fog skewers the view, although if Auston squints he can see the navy blue silhouettes of pine trees populating the other shore. Their reflections pan the water, imposing and grand.

Snap. Snap.

Auston needs both hands to steady the camera and the smell keeps invading. He can’t shake it away: it plagues the corners of his brain. It’s not until he adjusts his footing to avoid tumbling down with the erosion that he manages to spot a patch of red swarming from beneath him. The chemical smell translates into a metallic one, festering with disease. At the same time, it’s sickeningly sweet and clumps the seafoam washing up on shore with tiny black particles.

There’s no source or basin to speak of. The blood is instantaneous par from a tiny trail spouting up from the water, toward the craggy point overlooking the lake. Auston pauses, recuperating from the shock just long enough to use his disposable camera to snap the bloody pool. It’s not so much technique that he’s worried about, more capturing the untold story made by the scenery. The grain combined with the brutality of the act shines through.

Just as he’s turning to track down the blood, there’s a flicker behind him. A movement. He cranes his head over his shoulder, tucking his camera into his back pocket as a precautionary measure. There’s another stomp only paces away from him that threatens to tear a whimper out of his throat--something is most _definitely_ there.

An abhorrent brute, likely much bigger than he is, begins to bark in the distance. Water is lapping at Auston’s ankles and he realizes he’s backed up enough to lower himself to the shoreline. It makes no difference, his hands are already so clammy it’s a struggle just to pull the straps on his backpack tighter.

The second time he hears the fauna crunch the last of his determination snaps like a twig. Like a horse kicked with spurs, he’s scrambling up the rocks only to realize that he’s skidding because the blood has made the grass slick. Just as he’s looking over his shoulder to check if he’s forgotten anything he sees, well, _something_. And by something, it’s a red figure with a bloodied face and hands _running right at him_.

He honest to God screams hard enough to puncture a lung. In seconds, his feet are kicking up dirt and he’s thrashing free of the brambles to carve a path out of the clearing. The misty air seeps down his throat, chilling his esophagus to the bone until it’s difficult to keep huffing. Even still, he keeps running with a vicious desire to live. He doesn’t know if the creature persists behind him but he envisions it does to keep his heart working hard enough to pump blood at an inhumane speed.

He finally returns to the setting of the town at a record pace, flying past the longhouses and pumpkin patch gardens until the motel is in view and he can take great pleasure in jamming the key in the socket and slamming the door shut behind him.

 

The rainfall outside increases to a downpour, flanking the buildings with a fierce sheen. Auston’s confined to looking out the only single and gloomy window with a huff. In his hands, he holds a cup of instant coffee warmed up in the crappy microwave to keep his fingers occupied with so that they didn’t tear the stuffing out from the pillows.

He couldn’t entice his appetite with a granola nor a chocolate bar. He’d been spooked before but never like that. It single-handedly dried his tongue enough to stick it to the roof of his mouth and glue it there. Every five minutes, he looks back at the door and is overcome with a shiver so dangerous it threatens to stop his heart clean.

It’s patronizing. He’s not five.

He finally, _finally_ gets the motivation to rest the cup on his bottom lip and sip some lukewarm coffee and, like clockwork, there’s a knock on the door. It’s so roaring that the liquid gets spiked in Auston’s throat and coffee comes flying out of his nose with a hiccuping noise.

It’s a startling second that goes on for too long. Another series of knocks come faster than before and if Auston wasn’t a hundred percent sure the monster lacked the knuckles necessary to create the noise, he wouldn’t have approached the peephole like he does.

He warily eyes the fuzzy blob on the other side. It’s as red as the beast but shapely enough to be human. Little blue and yellow instruments poke out. He also spots a stripe of brown and gold. Something effeminate blocks the eye level.

He takes his chances and opens the door just wide enough so that his head can poke out. The primary colour scheme sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s some gaudish thing dressing down a young man.

Just as Auston opens his mouth to speak the man removes his rounded hat and pins it to his side with his right arm.

“Good morning sir, sorry to bother you but one of the villagers reported seeing you drop this.” In his left hand, he’s balancing Auston’s disposable camera. He’d been so obsessed with running that it must’ve slipped out of his back pocket.

Foregoing manners, Auston snatches it out of the man’s hands. It’s freezing to hold and must’ve been outside for some time.

“Thank you,” he says, submerged in awe. His hands shake, moulding themselves to fit the camera’s jagged and rather uncooperative edges.

“It’s my pleasure.” The man’s now free hand flies up to tip his hat, realizes it’s not there, and drops it with a ceremonial act of grace. “Haven’t seen you ‘round these parts, thank goodness Babs got a look at you running back.”

Auston’s ears enflame. So the village people _did_ see his effort to run from what was probably some rabid coyote at worst. He ducks his head down a pinch, only distracted by the pert little laugh it gets from the other man.

“Thank you,” he repeats like a broken tape recorder.

“Again, my pleasure. If it’s not a problem, might I come in?” He holds a hand up, palm unfurled to catch the water slithering off his shoulders. “It’s drenching out here.”

“Oh. Oh! Yes, yes come in. I’m so sorry.”

He extends the door open fully, only then taking note of how the speckled water droplets drop down from the door awning. It’s probably the only thing that’s saved the man’s outfit, besides the halo of dry cloth circling the man’s neck, courtesy of the hat.

The man is polite in his mannerisms and only steps in after wiping his boots on the gritted shoe mat outside. They’re muddied from the sole up, but it only makes the caramel-colouring bolder in contrast to the room’s carpet.

“You can take them off and sit down,” Auston says, trying his hardest to not dissect every detail but inconspicuously eyeing the attire with interest. The badge donning the man’s breast speaks of authority and yet, he’s as frail as a saltine cracker. Auston can tell; his shoulders perk and thin into bony arms.

“Thanks.”

Auston tries to practice restraint walking by, watching the boy bend over and pull at the boots’ pliable laces. He tries to tear his eyes from the shapely ass as he strolls back over to the bed frame, mindful of the damp spots spat out onto the carpet.

“So what’s with the whole,” he scrolls down man’s body with his hand, “getup.”

Auston stretches his legs out, sitting just on the edge of the bed so that he’s compromising enough of his personal space to be hospitable. The man throws his cap onto the dresser across from Auston, toeing his boots off with special care.

“Oh uh, I’m an RCMP officer.” The man beams. “That stands for Mounted Police. Officer Mitch Marner, at your service.”

Fresh panic laces Auston’s next breath, making his chest flutter. “Oh shit. I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?”

There’s a shame growing in his belly like bacteria. If God could smite him, or some twisted form of karma place judgement, he’d burn alive from the temptation of the boy and his response to it. Marner could handcuff him to the doorknob and leave him to starve for all he’d care.

Auston’s not sure if his guilt translates to blush on his face. Marner giggles to himself just enough to send his subconscious spiralling into a decryption of Auston’s current appearance. Marner’s visceral reactions _couldn’t_ _possibly_ be picking up on his backpedalling.

“Of course not sir. I wanted to make sure you were doing alright after such a chase. It sounded like you needed someone to talk to.”

“It was nothing really.” Auston ducks his head down. “I thought a wild animal was chasing me and I lost my shit.”

“That was Babs actually,” Marner replies with ease.

Auston can’t help himself, he stands up and makes a spectacle out of whacking his arms around. “I mean, there was blood everywhere.”

“Yeah he,” Marner’s hand scratches the back of his head, “kills the goats sometimes. Everyone loves his stew so it’s a regular thing. I ask him to do it more gracefully but he’s old. He doesn’t listen to me.”

“I see.”

“That’s enough about the village though. I still don’t know your name.” Marner sits beside him in such a close range he could probably smell the sweat off of Auston’s back. If it was anyone but the young beauty, Auston wouldn't've let them get nearly as close.

Auston lays the charm on thick, just to be bratty. “What? Going to run my license? Search me up on your little database?”

Marner laughs to himself. “I might need some more equipment to do that. No, I just want to get to know our visitor. This town doesn’t see many new arrivals.”

“I’m Auston,” he says, “and well, I’m not going to be here long.” He winds the leash to his camera around his finger and drags it out. “I’m going on a little road trip for photographs. I’m thinking about doing something like it as a career.”

Marner leans in. His eyelashes are so close that they nearly stroke Auston’s cheek. “Can I see some of them?”

Auston swallows to keep his composure in check. “Sure, sir.”

“Oh, don’t call me sir.” Mitch creates a shooing motion with his hand, fanning away the little specs of discomfort holding Auston so stiff. “I’m Mitch. Everyone calls me Mitch.”

“Mitch,” Auston tests it out. “I like it.”

Auston’s hands move like a pianist playing rhythmic high keys, running through the motions of heckling his backpack and unzipping the camera bag nestled inside. Mitch sits up straight to give himself a better angle to work with.

“I can’t show any on my disposable because I have to develop the film. This has got some good ones though.”

He doesn’t like to think of it as wooing a police officer with pretty pictures but it’s not a fine line. They’re sitting close in what could pass as an abandoned motel, scrolling through a whole vocabulary of nature. On prompted cues, Mitch will hum, haw, and coo. There’s not an image in Auston’s library that he can’t find goodness in. He’s just _that_ easy.

 

Someone’s taken a pair of scissors to the film in Auston’s camera. The last few inches are gone with an unnatural slice, just a wee bit too diagonal to be manufactured. The frustration doesn’t linger long. If the blood thing’s a normality then he’s bound to find more obscure shots to take. The only thing that doesn’t sit well with him is some older man’s hands all over his equipment, cutting out pictures he could simply not develop and save time.

It’s a violation of personal privacy, that’s what, but he’s already made a namesake for himself and needs to keep on the down low. After Mitch leaves, he writes out a list of things to do on lined paper with a ballpoint pen, ranging from vague requests like calling his mother and sister to crucial, like finding the grocery store and stocking up.

The rain stops mid-afternoon and the only remaining baggage is the puddles Auston has to step over. He swaps the hoodie for a flannel to be more in touch with the culture--he’s surely bested by Mitch though--and drapes it with a bubble vest to tuck his hands into as he walks. More people are roaming the town, separated by everyday fashion and what Auston would call “renaissance-wear” because of the tunics and weird belts. One thing they all have in common is how they look at him with disdain.

Something about them, beyond horrid fashion choices, is off. He sees log cabins, cottages, and fired brick houses. Power lines are mixing with tree branches. There are unused wells and outhouses populating little subcultures that make the town appear rural only to be sidestepped by freshly painted stop signs and pickup tricks twice the size of Auston. It’s not only a cultural but a temporal shock, living in a world that defies modern technology just as much as it leans on it for daily function.

The general store is one of the only public places in town with a giant banner strewn on top. It makes Auston’s job ten times easier. Inside is a different story. The entirety of it’s been gutted out to leave behind a meagre selection of products. The lady behind the counter looks bored out of her mind, toying with lint or something equally as gross with her left finger. She rubs it into the pores of the desk over and over again as Auston browses the milk selection and dry cereals they got with exception to Raisin Bran.

“Excuse me,” he calls over his shoulder, “do you have any--”

“What you see is what you get,” she cried back. Auston could hear her kick up a newspaper and even see the dust particles trickle through the air.

He rolls his eyes at the show of rudeness and grabs snack food to help get him through the visit, since with the blood and the sparsity of human life and well, everything, it doesn’t make sense to hang around. He’s fought tooth and nail through college and can manage on high-sodium foods just fine, thank you very much.

That being said, there’s not a lot of variety. Plenty of fresh food, meat, and fish stock the freezers but what he’d consider actual food is collecting dust in the back like a historical artifact from the 1960s.

There’s a sack of potatoes he can’t cook and a weird smell emanating in the corner, so he swipes whatever will fit in a microwave and launches them onto the storefront counter. The lady only continues to fan her newspaper, the dust flocking over her wrinkles in sheets. She heeds him mind only to take the petty cash and use some old-fashioned sorting system to hand him his change.

They use paper bags, not plastic, and the hemp rope of the handle burns into Auston’s gloved hands enough to sear the skin. It swings like a limp body in his right hand, ferrying the journey over the mounds of mud past the abandoned swing set donning the local park without any fanfare. Despite there being an upwards of fifty houses, only one or two people were out in the town. The schoolhouse is estranged: a chrysalids of damaged roofs and barred doors.

The mirage fits the image of cold rain pelting down on an abandoned warehouse, entrenched in sticky mud. The inn is no different: one of the only stone buildings in a paper town of origami buildings. It’s as if a breach of nuclear waste has chased half the population over the border.

Auston loves it. Doesn’t plan to stay long but will leave with gold lining his pockets and sheet protector sleeves hoarding thousands of photographs.

 

The temperature bell curves, ranging from mild to frigid in hours: rain crystalizing into snow. Auston tests the limits, pops open some liquid courage, and makes a break for the outdoors right around when the gnats begin swarming the patio lights.

His stomach is warmed by soup broth that sloshes around as he jogs up the hill, nearing the general store and various longhouses overlooking the pastures of goats and wilting grass. It’s a charming scene of childhood nostalgia and summer nights compiled into quaint rows of pumpkin patches. Auston snaps a quick photograph with the focus purposely jostled to make the wetness glow, like a wistful dream.

He purposely avoids walking down the same getaway path he chose earlier and strays through the boreal behind the motel, where ferns deck the forest floor like kitchen tile. Under sunset, it’s more accessible with the cloudcast out from view. Blood red tendrils of light stroke each barren tree.

It’s a hike up and around the shield of rock and stone, during which his findings become increasingly more outcast. An outdoor toilet, composed of wood but shockingly rotten, the door swung open to welcome wildlife of all kinds. Little daisy patches toe in, wrinkled and brown.

Click.

Then, an abandoned vehicle. A rusty old Chevrolet with no roof. The passengers and driver are composed of a particularly persistent birch tree that’s sprouted out from underneath and poked two holes in the seats. Someone has taken pliers the side of the car or scraped it against another vehicle because the blue paint is curling up from jagged claw marks.

Auston lets his hands run their course, taking chipped little paint flecks with it. Logically, the car is a beautiful antique wrenched in time. If it was refurbished, he could envision the colours would glimmer in the dappled sunlight, running the cliffs of California in a music video montage.

Click.

He gets a shot from the view of the middle seat, his shirt rolling up as he wriggles onto the bumper. The cold metal kisses the skin of his belly, chilling it cold. In the end, it’s worth it: his camera is the looking glass from where children (now, the lilac stems) would sit on a four-hour adventure drive, behind their two parents (the lumbering tree stumps) and a (demolished, chipped) windshield divulging the world through winding paths. Except there is no road: just a giant checkerboard of trees and dying fauna: the limbs of the forest.

It’s a challenge, a test of fate, when Auston again stumbles onto a procession of footsteps. Red, angry, bloodied shoes skid the ground, enclosed by the blackberry bushes. On the bark of the maple trees, little symbolic gestures are carved fresh into the skin until it draws sap. Said sap ripples out in a sticky escapade of yellow, ensnaring flies like prehistoric amber. He’d be stupid not to take a picture.

Click.

The trail of marked trees longingly calls to him like a sprite. It leads to something more: something human and transcending death. This time, he hesitates. He doesn’t want to grope the idea of tangling with monsters again, nor put his equipment at risk with how jumpy he can be when adrenaline is all his mind can process. Yet, it’s like the forbidden fruit in how precise each print stamps down and licks the envelope of green.

A deer corpse is sitting nonchalantly up against a pillar of tree bark, gutted from the stomach to the back with two clean swipes. Flies are swarming the poor thing in a grotesque macabre dance. It’s the treasure at the end of the hunt.

It stinks, wafting up plumes of smog-like sickness that Auston gulps down. He can’t look away. That’s no goat, and it certainly wasn’t killed by no human. The death is pitifully excessive too; a single cut to the throat or swipe to the stomach would’ve been sufficient but what’s left behind is a mangled body. Something took pleasure in a gluttonous show of power.

He can’t feel the tips of his fingernails or the temperature of what should be the frigid disposable camera boxed in his pocket as he raises the Pentax’s viewfinder up to his right eye.

Click.

The image is played back on the digital and it’s as horrifying as it would be seen in person, minus the smell. He looks at it for a long minute, flicking away flies that realize another body is closing in. It’s something that shouldn’t be stored for keeping, much put on display for the purpose of entertainment where there should be beauty.

He deletes it. Then, stupidly enough, brings the camera back up and takes another picture.

_Snap._

This time, the wavering hold he has the camera in makes the scene too dark and the hot shoe pops up to administer a flash. What boomerangs back is arguably worse, because the influx of white bleaches the body. It’s found footage: a horror movie capture.

That’s the one he chooses to save. Oh, he takes others because there’s an itching inside of him that he needs to patch, but none of them capture the fear like the overhead does. Strangely, the placement is what fucks with him. He’s looking down, on top, alive, but it’s the deer that survives and breeds nihilism deep inside his head as he walks back to the motel.

 

His dreams are where the visions of death manifest and it’s a terrible mixing of genres: running from a creature rotting with maggots as his feet dissolve into mushy stumps. Dirt clumps under his fingernails when his legs inevitably fail and he tries dragging himself forward with his arms. It’s unsettling at first, then escalating to pure nightmare fuel as the turns him around, only for him to see a pitch black soul covered head to toe in scales.

It’s looking at a nucleus of information, of disfigured limbs sticking out in a fanning pattern. It’s yellowed, with rotting skin, sunken eyes, and teeth the size of steak knives. In a second, Auston’s consumed, and he wakes to an empty room pardoned by old wallpaper and worn appliances. Home sweet home.

 

He’s rattled the next day, enough that he spills his coffee twice and almost washes his dishes in the toilet by proxy of his thought process at the time. He contemplates trying to force himself to be sick but the pain isn’t something he can control by throwing up. It’s made worse by being completely alone, with not even the cell phone service to fully appreciate his mother’s voice.

He does, however, remember seeing payphones docked outside the buildings at the front of the town. The abandoned buildings, really. it’s half past seven and he’s out before the blackbirds on a mission to talk to home.

He’s playing along and being nice, and yet, he doesn’t make it two tail-lengths up the slope before he’s intercepted by red. Belts clink together like saddle straps and by the time he’s reoriented his field of view he’s got a face full of teeth.

It takes a step back to let Mitch fold into view and even then the man’s heeled boots shoot him up. The contrast of him and the foliage in the background is so perfect; if it wasn’t rude Auston would imprison the popped dimples and windburn dusting the Mountie’s face on film.

“Auston,” Mitch greets. “Out counting the bed bugs?”

“Hello, Mitch,” Auston’s voice comes out like a rattle: a purr. “No, I thought I would go head up town.” He shakes the camera and its strap until the insides rattle just enough to intimidate Auston into stopping.

“Well, then I’d like to join you. If you don’t mind.”

“Oh, of course not. The more the merrier.”

Mitch responds with a cute little courtesy that makes the flared ends of his button up uniform bounce. The urge strikes again to take a picture of Mitch scrunched up, the flaps of cloth framing his perky hips.

Mitch assumes a position before Auston, the pine wafting off the gold tassels decking the shoulder pads. Auston puffs himself up and lets Mitch escort the both of them through town, like two canaries sharing the same branch.

They reach the lip of the valley where the payphones sit. Auston makes a beeline for them, not caring that Mitch has a clear objection in the form of a little bleat. The truth only hits him hard enough to concuss him as he lifts the phone and hears nothing, not even a dial tone, in greeting.

“I should have told you,” Mitch says, “the phones here haven’t been working.”

“How do you stay in touch with anybody?” he says back, perturbed. That raw feeling of anxiety rushes at him. The tin can telephone he thought was connecting him and his mother snaps in two.

“We send letters.” Mitch gives a wide grin. “We’re all very capable of writing.”

“I see,” Auston says when rather, he doesn’t. His hand drops, without purpose.

Mitch circles around him, helping to hook the dangling phone back over the handlebar to hold it in place. It’s done with such care, like he’s stopping a cradle from rocking. Then again, little that Mitch does reeks of hostility. Butterflies would sit on his nails, dragonflies nipping his arm hair: Auston sees it.

As a nature freak, it’s a fucking turn on.

“Sorry,” Mitch says.

He words the apology like Auston’s about to drop to his knees and bawl, naive to the real inner-conflict the photographer is battling. Luckily for Auston, he owns the self-control to not be scheevy in front of people, including, but not limited to cute little Mounties that are much too helpful for their own good.

“It’s fine. I’m not going to be staying long anyway.”

“Are you out for a stroll?”

“I was thinking about taking some more pictures.”

Mitch’s face splits, jostling his buttons as he leans forward on his heels. “Oh, please let me come with, I’ve always wanted to see a photographer at work.”

Mitch’s interest is cocked and there’s no deterring his puppy-dog stare. Fortunately, having the Mountie tag along opens up a new can of expediting, starting with passages through openings from the fern.

Mitch roams the forests and swamplands like it’s a second skin, pointing out everything from canary nests to snapping turtle nest dunes that Auston can gawk at. There’s no denying it’s supposed to be something of a scenic route. Here, the freezing rain decorates the trees like Swarovski jewelry: diamond earrings piercing the branches.

It should captivate Auston’s attention but he realizes early on that he’s affixed on how Mitch is acting as a dutiful wordsmith, pointing out little landmarks he personally finds interesting. Auston still gets some adequate (keyword adequate, not beautiful) pictures to boot, but they lack the heart he normally pours into the plaster.

Finally, the stumps peel away and the lake wades into view. The wind kicks up, almost taking Mitch’s rounded hat flying with it. Auston slaps a hand down on top, getting a tiny chuckle in thanks.

“This is my favourite place. It overlooks the lake and everything in it.” Mitch points a finger out. “You can see Morgan in his fishing boat right there.”

Sure enough, there’s a watery silhouette of a man casting a line out. Mitch sweeps his hand back, expecting Auston to bend over and unsheath his camera.

Auston goes for the jugular, still much too invested in the Mountie to get the dime-a-dozen shot.

“The uniform looks really good on you.” It’s true. It accentuates parts to Mitch that Auston can’t stop squirming over. Particularly the red and how it clashes with the pink hues skirting to Mitch’s cheeks.

Mitch flushes, twisting the hem of his shirt around his pinkie and thumb. “Thanks. It’s technically more for show but I like the uniform. No one’s going to tell on me.”

“Are there no other officers here?”

“For a town with less than a hundred? Maybe we should have more. We’re pretty civilized though. My brother’s also in the force but he’s big picture stuff. I’m day to day.”

Mitch skips a rock two beats across the water from the shore. There’s ice budding at the shore of sand, so there’s a prong noise as it jumps before dumping itself into the depths. When Auston’s eyes return to the uniform, Mitch has two hands shoved into his pockets, the left shouldering around his pistol.

“Hang on,” Auston says, fumbling with his straps to grab his camera. “You look really good.”

“Do I?” Mitch lets his hand trace the curve of his body before rooting to his hip. It only just avoids a sexual tone and still, Auston’s mouth goes dry. “How about now?”

“Actually, it’d be cool if you put both your hands behind your back and look out on the water.” The clash of colour and saturation is almost finger-licking good. Without the sun, the melancholy lull of the town is alive in the nature around them.

Mitch obeys with a smile that creates a twinkle in his eyes. Auston is on cloud-nine, eating up the composition with pleasure as he snaps three or four good shots and a couple more throwaways solely because each click of the shutter going off makes Mitch gleam with pride. It’s something Auston wants to fan the flames off, imagining the need for praise being brought out through his camera’s aperture.

“Can I see?” Mitch says following the tiny photo-op.

“Sure.”

Auston spins himself around so that he’s looking at the display from over Mitch’s shoulder. It has the added effect of letting him hover his chin close to Mitch’s nape.

Mitch browses carelessly, never dwelling on a single image of him. He skips each picture only seconds into admiring until he lands smack dab on the picture of the deer.

“Oh.”

Panic shoots through Auston’s system, the instinctual need to yank the camera back only halted by Mitch’s fingers squeezing the sides in place.

“No, wait. Let me see it.”

“It’s nothing,” he yelps.

“I just want to look.” Mitch shucks himself to the side, forcing Auston to release him. “Wow.”

“It’s stupid, I just thought--”

“No, no it’s really cool.” Mitch smiles up, the ends of his lips wobbling on his face. “I think it says a lot.”

Auston rakes a hair through his hair, changing the facade in lieu of not having a camera to sift around in to his heart’s content.

“I found it out in the woods.”

Mitch laughs to himself, his shoulders popping up. “Oh trust me, I’ve found a lot of stuff out there. Mind if I pitch in my two cents?”

“Sure.”

“I think the overhead shot is better than the ones with the trees. You get that ‘wow’ effect much better.” Mitch’s pointer finger almost smudges the screen with how precise he is picking out the details. He’s Auston puppeteer, leading the photographer along like the pied piper.

“Yeah,” Auston exhales. “I see it.”

“The others, not so much.” Mitch tilts his hand back-and-forth in an unsure gesture. “I think just the one is good.”

“‘Just the one’ is such a blasé way to describe a picture of a dead deer.” Auston lifts the corner of his mouth in a snarky smile. It’s worth it, for the bark of laughter he gets in return.

Taking Mitch’s advice to heart, he keeps the bird’s-eye picture and deletes the alternate angles, finally able to recognize they’re not what he was looking for in his little collage piece. It’ll go perfectly beside what he’s sure will be the portrait photo of his doe-eyed Canadian Mountie.

 

Something eats up his insides after the two part ways, and it’s not the same guilt that all-encompassed his first encounter with Mitch. He’s never quite clicked with someone like he did the Mountie and it’s hypnotizing watching him walk away, tipping his hat at every person he passes by. Mitch is a modernistic touch roaming the streets, bright red in a crowd of greys and browns pushed in the most unappealing fashion.

He’s a little drop of sunlight in such a desolate world. Maybe it wasn’t chance that dictated Auston come through; the rest of the town was bonkers sure but Mitch made Auston’s heart throb. A really powerful throb too--it beats like he’s run a full out sprint.

It’s also probably stalkerish and a bit creepy, but he takes numerous amounts of photos when Mitch’s back is turned. Some come back with a glimpse of the man’s jawline or ear, many blockaded by the uniform’s hat. All of them are beautiful.

A sensual pull possesses Auston then and there; it’s the only explanation possible for what overcomes him half-past eight, when he notices Mitch patrolling by the motel and feels inclined to leap out like his pants are on fire. He settles for calmly exiting the unoccupied room as he taps the light switch off, inwardly priding himself on his own show of self-control.

Mitch whips his head around when he hears the door slam, honing his attention Auston within seconds of the photographer jumping the parking bumper.

“A-Auston? What are you doing out so late?” His looks both ways before crossing the parking lot.

“Oh you know, thought I would look around. See what I can find.” He shrugs his shoulders with an air of nonchalance while still keeping his peripheral dead set on the smaller man. He leaves the invitation for Mitch to invite himself with open.

“O-Oh,” Mitch says, shakily. Seconds later, he leaps to correct himself. “S-Sorry, it’s really cold out so my teeth go nuts.”

“Yeah, I know.” Big puffs of air erupt between the two of them as they speak.

It’s easy for the conversation to fade into normalcy but Auston doesn’t want that, strangely enough. Mitch is completely alone, for his hands only. That’s an opening; everything around them devolves into motor parallax.

“Actually,” Auston stops himself from going dizzy with the thought vertigo, “I had something to talk to you about.”

“What’s that?”

“I think we’ve had a few good talks, yeah?”

“Yeah, I’d say that.”

“And I think you’re really attractive so,” he tacks on the smoulder, “would you want to, I dunno, get together later? It’s fine if you’re not okay with it.”

“Oh,” Mitch says but Auston’s not worried. He sees the little sparks of interest popping up all over Mitch’s face. He feels the man’s body pulse heat as he leans in closer, completely opening himself up now that he knows he’s got Auston tugged along on a lure.

Every visual infraction points to Mitch being satisfied with the question, so it’s surprising when Mitch wipes the expression clean and straightens himself up as tall as a totem pole.

“You’re very kind, but I must refuse.”

“What?”

Mitch places a hand over his heart. “My duty as a Mountie is to protect and serve. I can’t do that if there are other interests at mind. I think you’re an incredible man and in another life, maybe, but I think it’s best if we stay friends.”

The rejection is like taking an ice bath in January: it couldn’t shock Auston more. His mouth opens and shuts periodically until he can get a handle on himself. Thankfully, he’s able to come back down to Earth and manage a tiny smile for his efforts.

“Oh yeah, that’s cool! Sorry, I thought--”

“If I was giving out the wrong vibes I’m really sorry.” Mitch ducks, looking for something to hide behind. The blush that was once a big point of attraction becomes humiliating to look at.

Auston laughs to fill the void of emptiness opening up like a sinkhole between them.

“Sorry about that, I don’t know what came over me.”

“Oh no no, it’s fine. Thanks for asking. I’m flattered.” Mitch rushes at him and grabs Auston’s hand in both of his own. It’s a harmless gesture that burns Auston like a holy crucifix.

When Mitch’s hands snake away they leave a bloody mess on Auston’s hands. It rips a shriek out of him. He jumps almost four feet high, the bump jostles Mitch’s pockets and flips his hat off his head.

“Oh my god!” Auston almost screams. “Are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah? What is--” Mitch sees Auston and the handprint left behind; only then does he recognize the urgency and stamp himself all over Auston like he’s conducting a search.

An elderly couple strolls by them, looking on at Auston with judgement as they’re consumed by shadow.

Mitch’s heart’s in the right place: but the leather gloves spread the blood over Auston’s sleeves. Auston’s mouth producing a clicking noise as a direct result of the horrific spread of red and he backs away from Mitch’s hold just enough to make some personal space.

Mitch turns to Auston with his attention in full. “Auston. It’s okay.”

“Why are you covered in blood?”

“I must’ve touched something on the way here,” Mitch says. It doesn’t placate Auston and only succeeds in riling him up.

“You need to get yourself checked out! What the fuck!”

“Auston, it’s not that big of a deal.”

“It’s a pretty big deal!” he insists.

Auston battles the need to close in and hold Mitch by the hands and trace up the skinny arms until the man squeals. Directly following the confession though, it’s not the best idea. Auston’s hands wobble at his sides, waiting for Mitch’s reply.

“I’m sure it’s an accident.” Mitch flashes his pearly-whites, not caring that the grin is lopsided and fray with worry. “Thank you for worrying but I can handle myself and anything that comes at me. You can go back inside now.”

It’s an order masked by sugar, spice, and everything nice. Auston’s much too spooked to do anything other than nod his head frantically and back away into his room, locking the door once behind him. Once doesn’t feel like enough though, and he unlocks it just to lock it once more.

 

It’s not a revolutionary breakthrough. Auston’s not getting rejected from a dream job opportunity. It’s just a boy, and one that doesn’t have many options in town and now suddenly has a stranger coming onto him. It’s probably the result of jitters: when you start fresh in any job the last thing you want to do is fraternize with breaking the rules. Mitch will come of his own volition sooner or later; until then it’s a week full of nature hikes and finding entertainment in a town so empty it resembles a lowly mason jar.

Auston doesn’t doubt there’s something more brewing under the layer of dirt and grime; the beating heart of the forest left undisturbed for years. It’s his job to dig it up, with the camera his spoon. Whether he scratches the surface or not, well, that’s up to his detective work.

He starts the day off right and doesn’t dwell on the awkwardness still present after Mitch’s rejection. He treats his affairs like peeling off a band-aid: it’s going to sting but putting it off just increases the anxiety. It doesn’t mean he’s not wary when Mitch is only feet outside his door when he leaves for the morning, but he substitutes his usual flirting for a tip of his cap, which Mitch returns. The Mountie does not comment.

Still, the man’s eyes pin Auston down like darts on a dartboard. There isn’t a step he takes where he doesn’t feel Mitch glued to him. It’s a mild discomfort that wears once he’s vacated the main roads but he’s not above sprinting once he’s shielded by the forest for the sake of putting more distance between them.

It’s relieving to truly wander again; he was getting tired of hearing channel seven over television static and using the half-broken shower radio to check the weather simply because his phone can’t keep a charge to save a life. Now, there’s more debilitating love triangles or stupid elderly folk to gawk at him.

Sacrificing his pride, Auston wears his rubber rain boots and hops into the lake to get some shots of the minnows. Being a relatively cloudy day, the most he gets is the occasional wisp of a tail and even that is fleeting. He lets his fingers make mock splashes for the sake of contrived “water is nature” visuals and then gets the ugly bits: leeches, fungus, and dried up meshes of algae.

It’s pretty standard stuff for him, until of course he lays eyes on the tree markings, revived again and right up in front of his face. Some of the wood shavings are flushed out by the water, but many make little skirts around the trunks. Auston fishes out his disposable and dares to tread closer, taking a personalized shot of the little diagrams carved into the bark.

Each and every one of them is different from the last, all indecipherable. It may as well be latin characters he’s trying to pull from an old textbook. But there is a pattern, that much he can tell. The marked trees wind around the riverbend and disappear into the woods just paces away from where he dropped his camera last time. There’s even bloody spats wrinkling the grass to prove he wasn’t seeing things.

It takes a minute to muster his courage and continue walking. He moves at a lucid pace, slowed by what feels like pools of honey sucking his legs down into the mud. It’s a question of judgement and he’s tipping the scales in the other direction. It’s should be fleeting, impulsive, but he follows throw on it.

The woods whittle down, becoming densely packed with fir and birch. The bushes use their branches to hook to each other like stanchions, herding Auston down an increasingly narrow walkway. The trees go from scratched to mauled, some snapped in two by the force of their inscriptions.

At the end of the trail, past skulls and bones of all shapes and sizes, rests a cabin with more holes poked into its hide than swiss cheese. It’s built entirely of wood, with a single window torn out the side. The foundation is so rickety he’s sure a single fly landing on the roof would send the structure crumbling to the ground.

Auston on the other hand, is rock solid. He can’t fathom that any human being would subject themselves to such putrid living conditions. Inside, there’s no source of light, artificial or not, and the window alone presents a sad, empty room devoid of furniture.

Even with all the time in the world to himself, Auston takes his sweet time positioning his camera, always messing with the aperture and shutter, never quite reaching satisfaction. He’s waiting for something, but he’s not sure what; maybe it’s for Mitch to walk up behind him, wrap his gloved hands around Auston’s arm and beg to be on the other side of the lens.

Something does come on unspoken command but it’s not anything human. Roots begin to recede into the earth, the leafy appendage above Auston shuddering and creating a vegetative barrier that block out the sun. It steadily darkens into an inky abyss, until Auston can’t tell where he came from. Direction no longer exists.

Hoofsteps clap from only feet away from where Auston stands, preceding two pinpricks of light eating up the darkness like reverse black holes. They bear tidings of rotten flesh and disease, a pestilence of flies thrown onto Auston. The next step makes the ground visibly quake and sends Auston sprawling on his ass, backpedaling using both hands. The thing’s fingers stick into the pine needle floor like garden hoes and scrape, pushing him away.

The pricks of white sculpt themselves into eyes, six of them. Two tusks, or teeth, who knows, jut out and drag as the body they’re attached to prowls. It takes a particular interest in Auston. He can’t do anything more than squeal at the jagged shape stalking him down, flailing its many limbs until there’s a wreath of flesh sitting above its head.

He can take no more, Auston takes a messy photograph with the flash enabled to shock the thing into giving him some more time. He loses his backpack in the rush of the takeoff, twists his ankle when the soil gives way too easily on the landing, and persists regardless. Not a single thought can form in his mind for a solid minute as he makes his mad dash. Behind him, the thing screams.

Rows of trees are all he sees for what feels like miles. Then, within seconds the lake is yanked into view and he’s severely underestimated the weight of momentum: even digging his heels and shrieking when he topples over.

He loses his footing on the erosion and dipped back, his arms windmilling and his disposable camera falling to its death amidst the cavernous rocky glade below them.

“Help!” he says, to no one. In the end, it’s him hefting himself up the ledge, wary of the crest that separates ledge from land knowing the monster is probably still there.

Only problem is: there is something there. It’s human, _a_ human. There’s a wrinkled hand circling the leg of a goat that’s flipped on its back and twitching. Auston’s eyes whip upward, following the arm and torso the hand’s attached to and finding an older man in place. His mouth is downturned in a scowl.

“Help,” Auston croaks again, because his midsection is balancing on the precipice, legs still dangling like Christmas tree ornaments down beneath him.

The elderly man doesn’t budge. His only concern is keeping a grip on the goat bleating underneath him. To him, Auston’s a piece of dangling prey, displaced somewhere far off in the distance.

It’s humiliating being watched flailing around like a fish out of water but once it’s made clear the older man has no intention of giving him a hand, Auston finds the strength to finally roll over. His diaphragm is crushed by the weight of his body; it spastically flexes to try and suck down air to keep his blood pulsing.

It takes until he’s fully recovered to remember both the threat of the monster on his heels and the dead-eyed stare in the man. There’s no iris present, just a black pit. They don’t trace a single movement of Auston’s, remaining as cold as their owner. It’s evil personified and somehow, the presence of the old man is far more effective than having the monster turn the corner and lunge for him.

Auston slinks out of sight, laying his camera to rest in its watery grave. The man has to be Babs, it’s the only explanation for the goat and the stream of bubbling blood leading him back to town. By that point though, Auston’s so desensitized by the vision and the fall that he can’t manage the energy to report his findings to anyone. He wouldn’t be believed, even if they were real.

He just barely misses seeing Mitch parked by his car, polishing his spare set of boots. Preoccupied with hiding under his covers, Auston misses the bid of welcome and the questions, slamming the door in the man’s face.

 

It’s different walking into town knowing most of the people are black-eyed monsters. In turn, Auston treats them like dried up dog shit and bypasses any manners. He’s tired of being the topic of conversation and the odd one out just because he finds issues with trails of blood waving in the distance.

He circles the Saturday on his calendar as his notice to get the fuck out of dodge. By then, he’ll have a productive collection of shots to call his own, with a new set of undesirable pictures to pin up on the wall in case he ever needs a good story to tell ten years down the line at the family barbeque. The seriously good pictures were lost to the disposable, just as extinct as the creature his mind conjured up.

His change in resolve doesn’t change the temperament toward him--the villagers will occasionally crowd around his car and inspect the tires. He’s begging for one of them to try letting the air out or sticking a nail up the ridges just so that he has a reason to lose his fuse. But they’re always watching, bystanders to Auston’s daily routine.

Mitch too, becomes a background character. It wouldn’t be that big a deal if he wasn’t always around, poking where he shouldn’t and treading back from the forest with dirtied gloves. It’s like he’s stopped trying to be something he wasn’t. Auston gets the privilege of knowing he falls asleep to Mitch sitting on the pavement like the wise watchdog he claims to be, whittling down branches with his Swiss army knife.

The night before Auston’s supposed to be packing he’s having trouble sleeping and for once, it’s not his empty stomach that’s the culprit. There’s rhythmic chanting bombastically churning through the air. With each step, the ground quivers and it sounds like there’s a crescendo of rocks smashing into each other. Even though the temperature has long since dipped into the negatives, Auston braves putting on a toque and boots to venture out.

The moon is nearing full and it shines down like a spotlight, touching the crisp edges of branches when Auston’s handheld flashlight is weak. Mitch isn’t outside his window for once, but Auston can see some of the townspeople dressed in all white hopping around in the undergrowth of the forest. The obscene body jewelry they’re wearing turn them into little spectral fireflies when the light hits them.

There’s already one hundred dollars floating with his disposable in the chilly lake waters so it’s honestly stupid that he feels compelled to walk back and get his Pentax. The battery is charging by his bedside and only looks half-full when he unhooks it but it appears there’s more important things at hand, things that involve whatever drum is being beat.

Outside, the sensation of drumming increases to a tinnitus-like explosion. The noise itself deep in Auston’s earlobe and no head shaking breaks it loose. In the dark of the night, he manages to not once, but twice find himself stumbling deep inside a crater of brambles. It’s only thanks to the white from the moon that he manages to stay in range of the little white lightning bugs, laughing like they’ve downed four glasses of wine.

Finally, they reach a spot at a sandy clearing where there has to be three dozen people all crowding around one bonfire. The kindling alone is about eight feet tall and it commands a flame so outrageous it’ll probably burn half the forest down. A totem pole of sorts is stuck through it with three dead animal bodies strung along. On the side, four or so people mount a cross.

They all work in unison without speaking a single word: a hivemind. They’re bleached as white as the moon that overlooks them. If Auston wasn’t creeped out, he might be roused by the show of events. But, he is sufficiently creeped out.

By fuck, he’s stumbled onto some woodland cult where people eat raw goats with their bare hands in freezing cold conditions. It’s beyond being some Helter Skelter nonsense unless he’s supposed to forfeit his life.

And suddenly, their behaviour toward him makes sense. A piece of the puzzle falls into place. He’s only reassured when it’s revealed one of the cross workers looks achingly similar to a familiar Mountie.

In white, there’s a virginal tinge to him that meshes badly with the red markings painted onto his face and shoulders. He might even look pretty if the scene surrounding him wasn’t as psychotic as it was. Even though Auston can’t verify if it’s truly Mitch or not, his brain fills in the gaps for him.

Pentax in hand, Auston does what a photographer does best: he documents. Without thinking, on autopilot himself ironically, he screws the lens back to get a wide shot of the whole thing.

Snap.

The sound that follows is a little knick-knack. It’s the racket of a white pebble makes clattering against kitchen tile. It’s the burst of a middle schooler's birthday balloons popping. The popping noise when you stretch after sitting in a chair for two straight hours watching mindless Youtube videos.

It’s loud as all fucking hell. Auston hears it, and he’s sure someone else hears it too because everything pulls to a pause.

For that one terrifying moment, it’s like everyone is liquid breathing.

Like always, Auston bolts. He’s not going to stay behind and let himself be crucified; those people don’t have fucking morality and they sure as hell won’t sit back and give him a second chance. His boots kick up various frosted leaves and dried up earthworms in his frantic chase back to the motel. There’s no grace to his movements and it’s not his claim to fame. He’s just happy he still has the camera strapped to his neck by the time the parking lot’s cement hits his heel.

The first thing he does after fumbling with his room keys is lock the door. Once, twice, a third time. He throws his belongings into the trunk and hides the camera behind the shower curtain.

He’s not ready to escape into the night but he’s at least assured that no one comes to his door for the first couple hours. He would know, he watches it with bloodshot eyes for what feels like days, just waiting for someone to test the hold of the handle and the padlock that strings along with it. Sleep is the absolute last thing his brain can imagine partaking in, even as he acknowledges the all-nighter has him seeing weird shapes dancing in his peripheral vision.

 

Auston tries to medicate himself against his paranoia but it comes rushing at him when he’s finished packing his things and the door finally, finally moves. It’s a blessing and a curse, for the torment to finally conclude in those two neat taps that have him jumping into the air.

He’s standing in the spotlight and dithering. Logically, there’s no way out. He’s picked a well-equipped prison, but it’s a prison all the same. At some point, he’s going to have to answer that door.

It’s too hard for him to imagine. His visitor, whoever it is, stays patient and continues a hard series of knocks that drill into Auston’s composure. All the photographer’s got is a knife in his back pocket and a hand posed to pick it up at any minute. His phone is on speed dial to call emergency services, if by some miracle of God he’ll be able to find a signal before he’s deposited in a body bag.

One look down the dirty peephole and again, he’s seeing red. A pretty perfect red picture of youth, with blushed cheeks.

He can’t say no to that face: he’s reluctantly opening the door to a beaming face of all smiles and popped dimples. The man’s back in perfect uniform but Auston isn’t fooled, the picture evidence is something he’s spent all night reviewing and he can see the tiny blimp where the boy that looks like Mitch’s is grinning to himself.

“Auston.” Mitch twists the word around his tongue like melted marshmallows. “A pleasure.”

“What do you want, Mitch?” he asks, voice hardened to deflect the charm being thrown at him.

“To visit. It’s been so long since we’ve last talked, I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“Everything is fine.”

Mitch tilts his head to the side, getting a good vantage point to scour the room with. “You’re all packed up, are you leaving?”

Auston takes a second to look over his shoulder at the nicely made bed and the two suitcases worth of clean and dirty clothes, courtesy of there being no laundromat throughout his time there. “Yeah, I figured I’d get an early start. I’m kind of busy Mitch so--”

“Can I come in?”

“You see I’m kind of--”

“Let me rephrase that, please let me in,” Mitch says with an unnecessary show of force in pushing Auston back. “That’s a direct order. I have something to talk to you about.”

Auston mulls over the words, still trying to assess Mitch’s aim. The disparity between Mitch’s actions and his face, still open and smiling, alludes even him. Something inside of him tinges, an altruistic pull that has him opening the door and yielding his privacy to the other man. He wants to think it isn’t because the other man’s eyelashes are puffy and his belts are strapped tighter than normal to corset his whole midsection.

Mitch spins on his heel and refuses to let Auston leave his centre vision. That alone says plenty for a man usually so carefree he could live as some nomadic saint and now draw much of Auston’s attention. There’s something else in his field of vision though, something Auston finds entirely unreadable. It fogs up Mitch’s eyes, makes them one-way glass: Auston’s blocked out from it all.

“So, what’s there to talk about?”

“Just listen,” Mitch says. “I've been fielding some complaints from the residents that you've been harassing them with the camera.”

“What?”

“They said they were worried you got some very private moments on film.”

Word vomit pulses through his throat. “Listen, I take some weird shots but I've never been a voyeur.”

“I know, but for safety reasons I have to escort you to my office for further questioning.”

“But I swear there's nothing, you can look at the camera.” He picks it up off the bed to jangle it in front of Mitch’s eyes like a baby with a keychain.

“I will, and it will be returned to you in the same condition but for now I'd like to ask you to step outside.”

“But--”

“Are you going to resist arrest?”

“Arrest? But--”

“Auston?”

Auston can’t manage anything but blind panic, letting Mitch take the reins and bring him outside. Inwardly, he’s so fucking done with the stupid townspeople and their inability to not stick their noses in his business but none of it leaks out through the waterproof seal that is his mouth. Mitch walks like a man possessed, for once embodying the cold demeanor of law enforcement: Auston simply never imagined he’d be on the serving end of Mitch’s tough guy attitude.

Mitch makes increasing progress down to the parking lot and soon situates himself right in front of Auston, driving him toward the car until the photographer nearly doubles over and smashes the wing mirrors on the driver’s side. Mitch gets up right under his chin and keeps pressing, letting his bangs stroke Auston’s jawline.

Heat stifles Auston’s nostrils, in seconds he’s completely overwhelmed. There’s a pretty boy feeling up his chest, studying the groves of his chest underneath the bushy hoodie. Auston doesn’t move forward or back in fear of scaring him off but does try lifting a hand up to try and pacify the officer’s stern look. Auston’s bare hands touch fine leather, noticing how big and clunky they are when Mitch strips them off and underneath are fine fingers, manicured and clean.

Auston isn’t one to categorize his affairs because there’s been plenty, but Mitch has no respect for his personal space, especially in terms of testing just how pliant Auston will be during an arrest. Mitch reciprocates in full, finally maneuvering Auston around so that his stomach’s plastered to the driver’s side. His gun holster grinds into Auston’s upper thigh repeatedly. At one point Auston’s ready to spit out a demand that Mitch back off but he’s not sure if Mitch will appreciate it. He’s not about to play roulette with his odds.

Mitch supplies him with only a tiny grunt, taking Auston by both of his wrists and pinning them below the man’s waist in mock surrender. Auston’s left completely at the officer’s mercy, doing his best not to lift his hips up to get away from Mitch’s ministrations. Fuck, the uniform blows everything out of proportion.

The little steel handcuffs look so small but Mitch is able to clasp the first around Auston’s wrist without any difficulty. It’s instantaneous, like two chips of ice grind into Auston’s joints. He hisses at first contact but tries to squash down the worst of his responses. This time, Mitch doesn’t break a smile to reassure him. Mitch doesn’t do anything until Auston’s incapacitated.

“What are the handcuffs for?”

“Policy.” Mitch's words grind out between his teeth.

“Do you have to read me my rights? Do I have a say?”

“No, not really,” Mitch dismisses him without spectacle. He doesn't, however, stop mushing his joints together with Auston’s and making his grievances ten times more pronounced than they need be.

That can’t be right because Auston has to have _some_ kind of defence he can employ. Not that he’d go so far as to call in a lawyer for a few bullies on the playground but if he wanted to, well, he’d like that option too. Mitch’s blatant disregard is the equivalent of stepping on acid. Auston’s entire think space has gone empty, letting Mitch dominate all conversation.

Mitch, well, Mitch is transforming into something different. His back extends and his arms spread out, chin lifting to make himself look bigger. There’s movement at the front doors of every townsperson’s house and finally, the idealist small town image breaks. Auston’s got no agency and Mitch is leading him like a lamb to the slaughter: nothing about the description rings as normal.

“Wednesday night, I was thinking a lot about what you said and it’s true. We do work really well together,” Mitch starts, launching off into exposition the second they’re off the main roads. “I’m just upset I didn’t decide to act on it when you were still planning on hanging around.”

They’re mounting up the hill, a part of town Auston hasn’t explored beyond the rusted phone booths. Auston’s still browsing a vocabulary of phrases to try and find what would favour his situation best. He can’t get in trouble with the law. The sheer preoccupied nature of his thought process means Mitch’s words fly over his head and it’s just the tone that ends up resonating with him.

“I--what?” Auston breathes as Mitch finally connects their lips. There’s an oaken aftertaste that he can’t free himself from no matter how many times he smacks his lips together.

Mitch is boasting quite a capture, freeing up just enough empathy to lean down and peck Auston’s cheek just as Auston’s being forced forward. It’s a mean shove that sends him slamming to the ground, dragged through the mud, helpless as his two hands thrash in their restraints. He doesn’t dare open his eyes or mouth while he’s two feet deep in sticky, wet dirt.

He could try to scrub himself clean for weeks and it’d make no difference. He’s filthy and worse, fighting a terrible onset of chills as the wind picks up. More hands are on him and they don’t belong to Mitch because he can hear the offset huffing above him. The new fingers are wrinkled and roughly scratch up his throat, continually, as Auston realizes for the first time that he’s not going to Mitch’s office, or even the town’s law enforcement. Instead, he’s being swallowed up by crickety window floors and potted plants smashing on impact.

The shed is an absolute mess of garden tools and dirty potted plants. Near the corners, there’s a huge outline of black blotches scrubbed into the hardwood that Auston refuses to analyze. The copper-tinge alive in the air says enough, scrubbed into his nasal cavities.

There’s two men buckling him down into the wall and the sight of the strangers taking over the arrest sends Auston into a meltdown. He’s not entirely conscious of what he unloads on them but he knows it involves a lot of screaming and kicking. He swears up quite a storm and makes sure that the one man leaves with a black eye and a puffy lip.

These people wear the stench of death like its a new perfume and if Auston could willingly clamp his nostrils shut he would. Fate doesn’t favour him, they get up in his face, fasten a gag from a dirty dish towel and stuff it into his mouth so he can’t voice his objections anymore. All the while, Mitch evades blame and scoots out of view. Auston’s only got the skin on his back for company.

Parsing his energy takes more self-control than he imagined. The people leave and take their weird languages with them. They deprive him of any comfort and let him rot away in their own personal jailhouse, keeping the only capable person out of the premises.

As the door shuts behind them, an evil blows in from beneath the door stop and paints the room black. Everything becomes a little more crooked. What were once pretty tulips become thorned oleanders and the friendly pigeons morph into crows and vultures. They circle above and caw, recognizing Auston for what he is: a dead man walking.

 

Night falls after a day of relentless torture. Auston’s sure if his head could turn on a swivel, he’d see his purple hands as a direct consequence of the handcuffs cutting his blood flow off. The entirety of the day is blown off through naps of various lengths and the rumbling of his stomach as it lusts for anything it can break down into fuel. Auston’s pulled all-nighters and had days where his sustenance consisted of no more than sodium-packaged ramen noodles and it’s nothing like this.

Outside, the jangling of all calibres sounds out. It’s a celebration. Auston can’t slap a label on it because he’s divided from all the fun but the blood-curdling screams don’t paint a pretty picture for someone in his position. One of the rear windows reveals the cross they’d made the night before being hoisted up, this time fitted with ivy nailed into the headrest. It looks fit for a beggar king.

He squeezes his eyes shut and prays his allegiance to any divine entity that would bless him with freedom. He’d risk outrunning Mitch’s aim with a pistol if the possibility was freedom. His standards have dropped dramatically.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end with the steel binding his hands disintegrating into the air. Their proper owner, suited up and badged by the government, comes to collect both them and Auston with time. It’s not the welcome wagon Mitch will be expecting, especially when the first thing the Mountie hears is a desperate cry of what sounds like a wounded animal, strung up in nets and nearing death.

Mitch’s strut is still the cute, flouncy thing Auston’s lips dried up for, only presented in a much different circumstance. The door is only cranked open for a split second but through it, a trough-full of shrieking circles the shed. Licks of fire, torches likely, blow out the darkened scene outside.

Auston groans through the cloth gag, testing the strength of the handcuffs. Mitch got a leg up on him last time, and now there was a liability present from the word “go.” Auston’s so deeply entrenched in his predicament that he almost let his muscles relax in a sick display of submissiveness. It dawns on him fairly early in the thought process that backing down won’t make Mitch any sweeter than he already has been, just equipped with a greater power divide.

“Auston,” Mitch greets with a tip of his hat. Unlike their previous meetings, Mitch doesn’t embody the same carefree persona that he’s chalked up to be. His face is somber and, as evident from how his fingers spastically twitch every other second, on a razor’s edge.

Auston replies through the gag, but the consonants in Mitch’s name ensure it comes out sounding like an estranged huff.

Luckily for him, Mitch relents some control to bend over and try to untie the knot, then squat to equal the height difference when it proves too great. Auston ducks his head down to make it easier, more willing than ever to spit out the dirty rag before it sinks into his gums.

Finally, it gives way just enough to let Auston’s tongue push it out in a single shove. Mitch backs up a step as saliva sprays out, the knotted ball rubbing the underside of Auston’s chin as he proceeds to make himself comfortable.

“What is this?” Auston says. He tries not to be specific and acknowledge the tribal chanting but nonetheless, the message transmits to Mitch without any hurdles.

“We had to bring you here, you knew too much.”

“Where is here?” He’s almost afraid to ask. If it’ll be his blood painting the walls he’d prefer to die in blissful ignorance, cloaked like a baby.

Mitch’s thighs contract, pushing him up higher. “We’re preparing a celebratory feast for the full moon. Tonight, we present our sacrifice to determine the future of our village people.”

“Which, by process of deduction, I assume will be me.” Auston puts up a brave front when in reality, his heart is ready to high-jump out of his chest.

The colour drains from Mitch face, the impression under his cheeks deepening as the skin sinks in.

“I did everything I could but they want you.”

There’s relief in the form of a warm hand tracing down Auston’s forehead. Auston wants to shoulder it off and remain independent, but he’s scared. Truly scared, the type where you continue to function automatically without free will.

“I’m going to die.” Auston’s throat clasps, pulling the curtains shut to hide from the monster outside.

Mitch’s hand grabs him by the chin and pulls Auston in his direction. It’s far from a comforting gesture.

“You will die in honour of a God. It’s the greatest recognition one can receive.”

“A God,” Auston spits. “What thing do you have out there that’s so astronomically fucked it’s worth a slaughter of human life to appease it?”

Mitch swallows. “I can't say.” His knuckles are clenched so tightly they’ve turned white. There’s no gloves on to hide it.

“Can’t or won’t?” Auston presses.

A throaty noise bubbles out from Mitch’s lungs. The officer looks to the side, hefting out a few wallowing breaths that reveal the streak of humanity still left in him. All scrunched up like that, it occurs to Auston just how young he is. How young he’s probably been for a long time.

“Can’t. If I say it’s name I will be cursed.”

“Just tell me. Think of it as a dead man’s plea,” he begs. It’s helped by him groveling on his knees, looking up at Mitch with large cow-eyes as he clings to anything that will slow the process.

Mitch pinches the bridge of his nose, making a few aborted movements that he refuses to follow through on. For someone that should have all the answers, the lack of a proper response is deafening.

Finally, Mitch reaches some conclusion. The man’s breathing relapses and the pause button is unclicked. They’re back to some kind of reality and it includes having Mitch get obnoxiously close to the right side of his face. Hot air fans over Auston’s ear.

“A long time ago, a creature discovered this village. A demigod. Half animal, half divine. For the price of its worship it promised us eternal youth and protection. Many people ran and took the children with them. We stayed, have survived, and ever since, we’ve been the only ones to see it in person.” He looks pensive. “Usually, people cannot find our village: it let you through.”

It’s a condensed history reading and a biased one at that. Auston’s less than inclined to believe some monster is lurking on the outskirts of the forest, snacking on tourists. Mitch looks to be eating out of the palm of the mythology, his eyes as wide as saucers.

It does explain one thing. It explains the dreams, the fear, and worst of all, Auston’s encounter with evil, not two days back.

“That’s it?” Auston pants in fear. “You’re not even a Mountie, are you? Why wear the whole stupid _fucking_ uniform?” He tries to scurry away with both of his legs and only succeeds in scraping his bare skin raw.

“I love wearing the uniform. I love seeing the children smile at me.” Mitch beams, his shoulders scrunching inward as he constricts himself into such a small space.

There’s a phantom limb where Auston’s heart should be, choosing that moment to squeeze as hard as it possibly can. “But there are no children, are there? You’re all trapped in a dreamland with your heads on backwards, throwing human bodies out onto a fire for fun. You’re disgusting!”

A glob of spit hits Mitch’s cheek, an accidental byproduct of how wound-up Auston is. Mitch’s eyes flap shut, one finger swiping the drop sideways, into the wood paneling. When the eyes reopen, they’re lobotomized of any kindness.

“It bring me no pleasure, but I thought a familiar face would be better to part with than none at all,” Mitch says.

Auston whimpers. Mitch gives Auston back his personal space at the price of watching him stalk over to the array of gardening tools leaning up against the wall. Any one of them could be lethal if combined with enough brute force.

Mitch isn’t kidding around, his hands grab the mantle of a small axe. It looks stocky, but firm. Mitch could lift it over his head and slice Auston’s brain in two, dividing both hemispheres.

“You were my favourite,” Mitch says. His smile is inconsistent, watery. He steps toward Auston and checks the weight of the weapon. Every twitch of the fingers betrays his inexperience.

Auston’s body is one hundred percent ice. He’s looking up at the devil in disguise and there’s nothing his dried up tongue can parcel out that might save him.

“Why?” he slobbers out through big, droopy tears. “No. No!”

“They can’t know. No one can know.” Mitch sounds like he’s talking more to himself than Auston, his bottom lip quivering.

“Please, Mitch. Please. Not you. I’m begging you, just stop.”

“Make it easier for me Auston. I'm doing this so you will be free.”

Auston’s hysterical with fear; any opening to buy him some time is a teat he latches onto.

“I’ve seen your stupid God already! It knows who I am! Take me out there and you’ll see!”

He prays that if he says the words loud enough, they will be true. In truth, it's just a blockade to keep the idea of death away from him. He doesn't want to die in some ordinary shed.

“I--” Mitch resolve wavers. “What did you say?”

“The thing? The black shape with teeth and eyes? Yeah, I know it. I’m not scared. Take me out.”

Mitch’s skitters to the side, looking ready to combust with tension. The mention of the beast doesn’t tame him. On the contrary, it riles him up.

“I will have to ask Babs,” Mitch says, and it’s Auston's first victory that evening.

There's a whole lot of shouting and whining that his ears pick up on, the actual content still left vague. Mitch is taking a verbal lashing and is still trying to get up, which might be admirable in another time. Auston’s left to hang in his wooden prison cell until the knock on the door materializes and a gust of cold air smothers his face.

It's not Mitch, but the older man from before. Goat killer. His face is all wrinkles and dirt, his hair slick with grease. Behind him is another man, much younger, with a trimmed beard and darkened eyes. He might be a lumberjack with the flannel, if it weren’t for his bloody hands and the notion of there being a knife hiding behind his less than humble form.

“You said you saw him,” the old man grunts. “What was his name?”

“The thing has a name?” Auston says back.

Auston probably looks and smells like garbage. His eyes would be baggy and his cheek swollen from being slammed on his side. He’s folded up like a lawn chair and only makes the situation worse by process of deduction.

“He’s lying,” the younger man says, not bothering to hide his judgement as it explodes through his body. “Do I take him out?”

“If Mitch won’t do it, then yes, go ahead.”

The older man holds the door open, letting frostbite burst in behind the younger protege as he corners Auston. They end up dragging him the same way they did to get him into the shed, matting his hair with leaves. Auston’s lungs don’t get a break from the howling he does throughout it.

There’s an oddball collection of people all gathered around the top of the hill, circling a point where their torches light a crevice in the fir trees. The terrain turns swampy, then rocky, budding up to make a mountainous form in the distance that only the shine from the moon can touch. Auston’s, cradled like a babe, sees it all and cries.

They take rope and quickly fasten him to his post, during which Mitch appears for what might be the final time in a grand costume change. Like the others, he’s dressed in white again and it confirms Auston’s belief that he’d been part of the gig the whole time. The sequin sparkles when it’s hit by starlight and Auston’s so wiped from the day’s antics that he lets himself appreciate the tiny beauty in it. Mitch even goes so far as to lift his skirts so the mud doesn’t touch, forewarning Auston about how thin and delicate the articles must be.

Auston doesn’t resist anymore, not with grouping of people around him. He’s burnt out. Just holding his eyes open takes a kind of energy that zaps through his heart and almost sends him into cardiac arrest.

Mitch takes a place by his side, fit with a reddened nose and face. All he’s exhaling now is frost that spikes into Auston’s collarbone, eating through the ripped fabric of his hoodie. Auston holds Mitch’s presence closer than the others even as the hemp cuts through his wrists in ways the handcuffs did not. It’s the equivalent of holding Mitch’s hand.

“You’ll be great,” he hears Mitch say. “I love you.”

There’s more babble from the elders but Auston’s too busy wallowing in self-pity to read into it. Mitch slinks in close just enough to let his nose touch Auston’s eyebrow, his lips pressing a small reassurance beside Auston’s right eye. It’s so unbelievable cryptic now that Mitch is walking around half-naked. Auston might even call it chivalry.

There’s a fire burning behind them but its heat doesn’t reach Auston. Both of his hands are tied above his head, his waist circled with rope. He hasn’t eaten anything all day and yet, his stomach is contracting like he’s about to give birth. Mitch stands beside him the entire time and prays under his breath; disconcerting to say the least.

Finally, the trees clink into place and pause. Nothing moves, not even the people. It’s hard to so much as blink without the action itself slowing to a crawl.

The hoof steps obliterate all that stands in their way, forcing the leagues of people into a bow. Auston’s paralyzed with fear and remains standing as beside him, Mitch is knocked over onto his knees by the power of his devotion.

Auston braves through the urge to follow suit by the skin of his teeth and continues to hold his head high. The monster doesn’t agree with his show and howls out a noise of contempt that leaves Auston’s bones tingling inside the confines of his skin. The compulsion to leave his head hanging and go boneless rips through his head again with enough force to give him whiplash.

A nauseating feeling brews up the underside of his throat. It pushes his Adam’s apple out and any air he pushes out from his nostrils is sucked up again like a vacuum cleaner. He’s insatiable with a need to flee the scene of the crime but can’t follow through. Someone’s turned his blood into the consistency of a thick milkshake.

The monster’s piercing white eyes shine through like Nordic stars. In the light of the fire, its inky black hide appears to vibrate, the quills on its back porcupine in nature. Auston can’t tear his eyes away from the multi-faceted pupils; they bear into his body and reduce him to strings of DNA.

Beside him, Mitch spasms with how unsteady his breathing is.

Auston’s back arches against the hard wood of the cross. The chimera of creatures, now only feet from his face, chortles out a bark. Stinking air shocks through him, jostling his hair. He shrieks, the noise stirring Mitch from his position.

Throughout the huffing and growling he manages to hear Mitch’s quiet plea, the shush under the man’s tongue that demands Auston be quiet. There’s nothing Auston wants to do more than scream his lungs out, purely out of spite.

He severely overestimates his capability to do that though. It’s a thought that is gobbled up by the infinite pit of memory and never used. He plays the part to a tee and doesn’t care if it registers as some loss to his dignity when Mitch is sinking into dirt just beside him.

It’s roughly the size of a house, with tusks, scales, everything an apex predator would need. It separates Auston from the pack almost immediately and rattles out its own battle cry, rushing at him.

A big talon screeches down, claws outstretched, and Auston’s eyes clamp shut. The structure he’s tied to crumbles like ash around him, splinters exploding in the air. Auston screams, a slice of wood digging into the meat of his throat, himself still tied to the post that’s now been destroyed by the force of the blow. It’s only beat by the searing pain that erupts from his chest, cascading in a sluggish pulse of sick blood.

**Author's Note:**

> potential ending  
> (He doesn’t remember what happens immediately after, his memory purges itself. The world dissolves in little squares that regenerate only once he’s come down to earth. Mitch is there, uniform and all, holding Auston’s chest down where he can see a half-moon shape is scarred into the tissue.
> 
> “Did Hela miss me?” is all Auston can manage. It’s the first thing that comes to mind. He can’t even remember where he is or what he’s supposed to be doing.
> 
> “No, Hela didn’t,” Mitch says, hushed. Then, he smiles. “Welcome home, Auston.”)
> 
>  
> 
> @cursivecherrypicking on tumblr


End file.
